Ferdinand dilemma over Terry handshake

QUOTE ANTON Ferdinand will consult QPR owner Tony Fernandes today before deciding whether to shake hands with John Terry ahead of Saturday's FA Cup tie with Chelsea.

Ferdinand is aware of the potentially incendiary nature of the FA Cup fourth-round tie and the clubs issued a joint statement yesterday warning fans they will take action against anyone using discriminatory language. It will be the first time the clubs have met since Terry was charged with racially abusing Ferdinand during October's Premier League derby.

The QPR defender is in a quandary as to what to do on Saturday. He does not want to inflame the situation, but neither does he feel he can easily shake Terry's hand given the nature of the allegations, even if the Chelsea captain vehemently denies wrongdoing.

Ferdinand has not made up his mind and there is no pressure from QPR for him to be reconciled with Terry during the now traditional pre-match handshake.

Fernandes' opinion could be key but the owner is unlikely to put any pressure on the defender either way, although he will want to try to ensure that the match takes place without incident. It may, therefore, be deemed that a handshake could be the best solution.

Hatred

In the statement, QPR and Chelsea said: "Discrimination has no place in football or society. Both clubs enjoy fantastic support. However, we would remind fans that, while we want to hear their passion, hatred and abuse is not what being a fan of QPR or Chelsea is about.

"The clubs will work together with the police to ensure that anyone using discriminatory or inflammatory language is identified and that the strongest possible action is taken."

Ferdinand should have a new defensive partner after QPR agreed a £3m fee for Manchester City's Nedum Onuoha.

Meanwhile, nine men have been arrested on suspicion of racist chanting by Charlton Athletic fans on a train following the FA Cup tie against Fulham on January 7. UNQUOTE

 

I say shake his hand. Then give him a good kicking when you have the opportunity.

 

Terry has chronic back injury problems IIRC. There's a starting point.

 

shake his neck!!

 

Fernandes is going to sit on the fence and tell Anton to do what he feels is right (that's how businessmen get on - don't commit unless you have to)

The will he/won't he decision on the handshake is going to be the first incident in the match - and most of us are going to need binocs to see it

 

I'd do the "Balotelli manoevure" on him - only harder !

 

So someone's committed an offence against you (threatened your kid, mugged your missus, burgled your flat or whatever). You know they've done it and it's going to court. Meantime you and them come up against each other in a tournament of some kind, and it kicks off with a photo opportunity...

Are you going to put your arm round them and smile for the camera? What a dick if you do. I KNOW I wouldn't. So why should Anton?

 

Totally agree 100%.
Personally i think it makes a better statement by NOT shaking the scumbags hand.

 

If Ferdinand shakes his hand, he is saying he has no hard feelings over what Terry said. Not only that but it suggests as Sepp Blatter put so eloquently that 'racism can be settled with a handshake'

 

Shake his hand...with a blade inside

 

Not sure if this was posted before, but below is an excellent article from the Guardian, with which I personally am in total agreement.

As Queens Park Rangers meet Chelsea in the FA Cup on Saturday, Ferdinand alone must decide how he handles his first encounter with Terry since the racism allegations

Marina Hyde
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012 23.00 GMT

And so once more to top flight football, crucible of race relations debate in early 2012 Britain, amid suspicions that well-meaning bigwigs are preparing to mishandle another episode. What are we to make of a flurry of closely aligned articles suggesting that Queens Park Rangers are encouraging Anton Ferdinand to shake John Terry's hand before Saturday's FA Cup tie, which itself takes place just days before the Chelsea and England captain is up in court charged with a racially aggravated public order offence when directing abuse at Ferdinand?

QPR decline to comment on the reports, so let's hope they are misguided invention, because the prospect of Ferdinand's bosses attempting to gently manage the situation is troubling. We shall learn more about the facts of the case when it comes to court next week – Terry strongly denies the charge – but given the gesture will be read as Ferdinand's first wordless public comment on the matter, he should be allowed to reach his decision with the minimum of intervention, which includes pastoral advice that could end up feeling like pressure. It's his business, not his club's.

The FA is understood to be keen to see a handshake. At least this is not a Premier League tie, because one can only imagine the lengths to which Richard Scudamore's august outfit would go to achieve that end, thus emphasising the shiny harmony of its "product" to overseas purchasers. Unlike the Terry-Wayne Bridge handshake, which was a box office plotline of the sort of that stokes World Wrestling Entertainment, a stand‑off over an allegation of racism is less easy to package.

Of course, you can see the obvious reasoning behind what seems to be a concerted wish for the handshake to go ahead. Neither club wants trouble, and the match has been brought forward to midday on police advice, while prevailing wisdom has it that players must act responsibly to prevent volatile fan elements from acting irresponsibly.

But prevailing wisdom should always be subordinate in matters of conscience. If Ferdinand is indeed reluctant, then at best any guidance to shake hands would reek of the sanitising impulse which has seen Parliament Square cleared of protesters, lest any of the world's TV cameras – in town for the Olympics – should get the idea that London is anything other than united in its love for everything from various wars to the IOC and its corporate sponsors. At worst, it would epitomise the old shut-up-and-play attitude that seeks to keep athletes in their place and out of politics.

Alas, that attitude appears to be gaining traction again in some quarters. Since the initial storm over the Terry and Luis Suárez allegations subsided, there has been a drip-drip of increasingly apologist articles, most recently one on Spiked, apparently deeming pretty much any insult spewed within a stadium to be "passion" – surely the woolliest cliche in football – and a quintessential part of the game itself. To which a reasonable reply might be: since when? Extremist fan behaviour is nothing more than a late-1960s bolt-on to football, and no more part of its timeless essence than endless Super Sundays. Look at the pictures of the terraces in the 1950s, and the serried throngs of fans in their caps and overcoats. Without sticking my neck out, I'd hazard none of them were baying that Matt Busby was a *****phile or shouting at Jackie Milburn that they hope his kid got cancer. Yet were they all prawn sandwich-toting middle‑class newspaper columnists with no understanding of what makes football great?

But this is an argument used by defenders of a status quo which many black players voice unhappiness with – namely, that anyone who objects to such displays of "passion" is some rarefied broadsheet tosser who fails to understand that The Masses need the release of being able to bay racist epithets at people within the strict confines of football grounds. How grimly patronising – and not to broadsheet tossers. Not only does it fail to take into account the testimonies of working‑class black players who are degraded by such displays of "passion" – after all, what do those irrelevances know? – but is the sort of tin-eared, contrarian drivel spouted by those desperate to ingratiate themselves with those they see as football's tribal warriors, but who have never really expanded their student Marxist belief that sport is an opium of the people.

Those with a greater imagination move beyond such a narrow, essentially conservative view. A few years ago, the late, radical US sportswriter Lester "Red" Rodney gave an interview to one of his journalistic heirs, Dave Zirin. In it, former Daily Worker sports editor Rodney recalled how in the 30s the old guard at the communist newspaper had vetoed the idea of covering sport at all, but he persuaded them that people could be reached politically via sport. Oddly enough, almost every example Rodney gave of its ability to do so related to sport's role in fighting racial prejudice in society. Were this most principled of campaigners writing today, you can bet he wouldn't have been penning lofty articles explaining that using "black" as a derogatory term within a football ground is something to do with being working class and real and should be let well alone. My suspicion is he'd have treated the idea of "guidance" being offered to Anton Ferdinand with distinct misgiving.

 

QUOTETony Fernandes was speaking to Anton Ferdinand this afternoon in a last-ditch attempt to persuade the Queens Park Rangers defender to shake John Terry's hand before tomorrow's FA Cup tie against Chelsea at Loftus Road.

Standard Sport understands Ferdinand thinks it would be hypocritical to make the gesture and remains determined not to shake the hand of the Chelsea captain, who was charged with racially abusing him during the clubs' Premier League match at QPR in October. Terry denies the allegation and the case is scheduled for West London Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.

Due to business commitments in Malaysia, Fernandes cannot be at the match so the QPR owner will phone Ferdinand from his home in Kuala Lumpur once the players have trained.

The club feel Ferdinand should make the gesture and let the courts decide the case but QPR chief executive Phil Beard failed to persuade the centre-half to change his mind during a meeting at the training ground yesterday.

The decision by Fernandes (below) to contact the player shows how concerned the club are of the impact that Ferdinand not shaking hands with Terry may have on both sets of supporters.

Since the incident, QPR fans have been chanting about Terry and the west London rivals this week issued a joint statement in a bid to ease tensions.

It was reported today that Ferdinand will be escorted to and from the ground by police and that he has paid £30,000 for extra security after receiving a death threat in November.

The 26-year-old is said to have installed extra CCTV cameras and panic buttons for his family and employed a private security firm run by former members of the army.

With the pre-match talk being dominated by the meeting of Ferdinand and Terry, the fact there is a place in the fifth round of the Cup at stake has been somewhat lost.

That is a cause for concern for Ferdinand's team-mate Danny Gabbidon, who has stressed that the players must not allow the negativity surrounding the occasion to distract them.

He said: "We are going out there to play football and can't get involved in all that other stuff. We have to go out and do our job."

There has been a change of manager since that fractious encounter but Gabbidon feels there is no need to change the gameplan that brought about a 1-0 Premier League victory.

Rangers put the Blues under intense pressure, capitalising on the visitors having Jose Bosingwa and Didier Drogba both sent off.

The then manager, Neil Warnock, had spotted a weakness in Chelsea's slow style of play and even though Mark Hughes is now as the helm, Gabbidon believes the opportunity exists to exploit that again.

He added: "I don't think Chelsea knew what was coming earlier in the season. They started the game thinking it was going to be easy but when the tackles started going in from us they never settled.

"It's the one thing about Loftus Road - the atmosphere is really good, the crowd is right on top of you and Neil wanted us to use that.

"He told us, 'They won't be used to this,' and it worked well. We were in their faces and they didn't have a minute to breathe. We gave them no time on the ball and that is what we need to do again. We played really well in October but we will have to put that same level of effort and intensity to get a result again.

"Chelsea know what to expect a bit more this time and will obviously look to put things right but anything is possible with the fans behind us."

Gabbidon has his own motivation for wanting to beat Chelsea. Time is running out for the 32-year-old to get his hands on the trophy. The closest he came was in his first season with West Ham in 2006, when they drew 3-3 with Liverpool in the final before losing 3-1 on penalties.

West Ham led 2-0 and 3-2 in normal time, only for Steven Gerrard to level the scores twice, including a last-minute wonder strike from 35 yards.

"I think about it all the time and it still hurts," he said. "We were 2-0 up and were the better team but Gerrard basically won the final for them with those two goals because they had more experience at penalty shoot-outs than us. I have always wondered why footballers cried when they lost but after that game I realised why. I was very close to tears myself.

"It is still a dream for me to go back to the final one day. It is the same for any player whether you're young or old. I never thought I'd do it once and would love to do it a second time."UNQOTE

 

Might depend on where Terry has had his hand

 

I really hope that this article is just the kind of baseless speculation you normally get in The Standard. The idea that the club should be pressuring Ferdinand into shaking the hand of someone whom he alleges he has been racially abused by is totally inappropriate.

 

I wouldnt shake his hand! Especially after what that idiot Seb Blatter said about everything is forgotton if you shake hands.

 

I don't understand the need for a joint statement. It wasn't a QPR player who was alleged to have made a racist comment. It wasn't QPR fans who chanted "Anton Ferdinand, you know what you are" at a European match against Genk. It wasn't QPR fans who were observed chanting racist songs on the train back from Norwich.

Yet despite all this it is QPR that have to join up with dirty Chelsea in an attempt to difuse any tension before the match on Saturday!! It is the VICTIM of the racial abuse that is having to get private security to escort him to the match in case of reprisals from Chelsea fans.

It looks like Mark Hughes, Tony Fernandes and the FA want to put pressure on Anton Ferdinand to be the better man and shake John Terry's hand on Saturday. Only for JT to stand up in court next week and say "He's got no problem with me your honour, we even shook hands last time we played each other" You can bet your last penny that JT's legal team are rubbing their hands together over The Handshake Defence.

I want to see Police out in force on Saturday and not allow Chelsea supporters to walk en masse down Loftus Road chucking celery and abuse around like they did WHEN WE BEAT THEM in October. Knuckle dragging cavemen in Burberry, disgusting.

 

To be frank, the whole thing is pretty tiresome. Let the courts work it through. Anton (and his teammates for that matter) can choose to do whatever they wish. I'd just like us to win, please.

 

Anton...please do a Wayne Bridge handshake.....

 

I say Anton should go to shake his hand, then pull it back and immediately launch into a rendition of Mammy - Al Johnson style.... that should diffuse what would otherwise have been an awkward situation

 

I think he should do what his consience dictates - not what the club, the fans, the opposition, the media or the FA want him to do.